Tag: voting

And I can’t even blame this one all on Stephen Harper

This kinds of pisses me off:

Federal parties agree to scrap bill correcting voting inequalities

The Harper government and the opposition parties have agreed to quietly sink legislation that would have given Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta more seats in the House of Commons. As a result, urban and visible-minority voters will continue to be discriminated against in Parliament.

Under the legislation, Ontario would have received 18 new seats, British Columbia seven, and Alberta five, bringing all three provinces up to the level of representation in the House warranted by their populations.

Though the above is denied by the government, the bill has been given one day of debate so far, so it’s not exactly speeding on its way to passage. The fear, apparently, is of angering Quebec and Maritime voters.

So fellow Ontarians, BCers, and Albertans, if you really want to have an impact on the next federal election, you’d best move to another province, where your vote will actually have weight.

Because in Canada, everyone is equal. Only, some of us are more equal than others.

Doing my bit for democracy

For the first time in my life, I voted in the early polls. That’s it, I’m done. Now I can focus on a truly inspiring Canadian contest: Who is Canada’s favourite dancer? (Seriously, if you haven’t seen So You Think You Can Dance: Canada? You should. It’s been delightful so far.)

But the economy is tanking, the polls are tightening, and the election is beginning to look like a bit of a booby prize—whoever wins this one is going to be blamed for the bad times, even if it’s not their fault.

So with all the market turmoil, can we just forget about combating global warming now? Wouldn’t that be nice. Remember, economic crises—we’ve gotten over them before, we’ll get over them again. Ecological crises—not so much. I’m going to quote Andrew Nikiforuk quoting Thomas Friedman, because they’re both real conservative guys:

By Friedman’s evocative accounting, the globe has now entered the “Energy-Climate Era” and faces several hot emergencies: petropolitics (it gives power and money to leaders who have earned neither); dramatic climate disruption; the rise of middle classes in India and China; and a real weapon of mass destruction, the catastrophic loss of biodiversity in the world’s forests and oceans. The global economy has become “a monster truck with the gas pedal stuck and we’ve lost the key.” Unless we switch to cleaner fuels, “our lives will be reduced, redacted, and restricted.”

And we’ve got about 10 years to do it. Cheery, huh?

Also interesting—because I just haven’t heard about it anywhere else—was Doug Saunders article about a scheduled meeting between presidents of the EU and whoever is Prime Minister on October 14. Subject: A potential economic partnership with Europe. Problem: All the Canadian provinces would have to agree with this, and Canadian provinces don’t agree on much. Saunders blames Harper’s policy of “open federalism” for just making this disunity worse.

Despite Europe’s stock market also being in a “boomerang” crisis, it’s still likelier to be a healthier trading partner in the next few years than the US, the source of the collapse. And it would be nice to have a PM who wasn’t philosophically opposed to getting all the provinces into one trading agreement with that lucrative market.